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Darrera modificació: 2013-12-04
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Walton, Steven A., Wind and Water in the Middle Ages: Fluid Technologies from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Tempe, Ariz., Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Medieval and Renaissance texts and studies, 322), 2006, xxvii + 300 pp., il.
- Resum
- Before the engine or generator, wind and water powered everything beyond human or animals' muscles. Beyond the hydrological and solar cycles responsible for life in the first place, humanity has been singularly successful in harnessing these two natural forces to our will. Water and its power has for millennia formed the lifeblood of communities and such a fundamental resource deserves study as more than just a technology. In the pre-industrial era mills where everywhere: they ground grain, sawed lumber, fulled cloth, pulped paper, pressed cider and olives, and even incorporated gunpowder. Water and wind are oft-neglected prime movers and natural resources that allowed western society to grow at rates other civilizations had not matched. Since the late classical world, western society has taken nearly every opportunity to harness these resources wherever they occur. They were remarkably adaptable and were remarkably stable as well as technologically and socially malleable over time; they were indeed, “fluid technologies.” Waterwheels, water lifting devices, pumps, fountains, windmills, and other hydraulic and pneumatic machinery also flow into one another in their geography, their technology, and their chronologies, their fortunes, as well as in their overall meanings in law, art, politics, economics, and other human endeavors. Further, it is clear that they moved fluidly between cultures: from the Greeks to the Romans, from the Romans to the Arabic world and to the medieval Europeans, and in some cases such as Spain, back and forth between those groups as well. Further, one of the stronger themes throughout this volume is that of continuity, rather than the more common lens of technological revolution through which to see material change. The story of wind and water in the Middle Ages relies primarily upon the constant ebb and flow of these fundamental underlying technologies that kept society functioning. When we regard wind and water in the middle ages, in terms of the larger system of power and use, it becomes clear from these essays that there never was much of a technological rupture in Europe as we have sometimes been taught—rather what had been invented and innovated in the antique world grew, changed, morphed throughout the Middle Ages to provide necessary sustenance and opportunities of industrial capacity. When new inventions certainly did appear during this period (the windmill is the obvious case), they became enmeshed evolutionarily in the network of those earlier systems rather than necessarily triggering a truly revolutionary change in the structure of society. Contributions in this volume range from the Antique world to Elizabethan London; from Egypt and Spain to Ireland and northwestern Germany, and the contributors themselves come from disciplines as far-ranging as history, history of technology, art history, garden history, legal history, environmental history, and literary studies.
Contents:
* Introduction (xi) / Steven A. Walton (Penn State University)
* The "Vitruvian Mill" in Roman and Medieval Europe / George Brooks (Valencia Community College)
* Mills in Medieval Ireland: Looking Beyond Design / Niall Brady (The Discovery Programme, Dublin)
* Waterwheels and Garden Gizmos: Technology and Illusion in Islamic Gardens / D. Fairchild Ruggles (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
* The Role of the Monasteries in the Development of Medieval Milling / Adam Lucas (University of New South Wales, Australia)
* Lords' Rights and Neighbors' Nuisances: Mills and Medieval English Law / Janet S. Loengard (Moravian College)
* The Right to the Wind in the Later Middle Ages / Tim Sistrunk (California State University, Chico)
* Public and Private Urban Hydrology: Water Management in Medieval London / Roberta Magnusson (University of Oklahoma)
* Mills and Millers in Medieval Valencia / Thomas F. Glick (Boston University) & Luis Pablo Martinez (University of Valencia)
* John Ball's Revolutionary Windmill: The Letter of Jakke Mylner in the English Rising of 1381 / David W. Marshall (Indiana University)
* The 'Mystic Mill' Capital at Vézelay / Kirk Ambrose (University of Colorado, Boulder)
* Of Mills and Meaning / Shana Worthen (University of Toronto-Imperial College London)
- Matèries
- Història de la tècnica
Tècniques
Sanejament
Banys
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